Lol! Hey, that 1-5 was hard earned! After throwing my axes into an epic battle of everyone else, I... fell back to a strategic location and had an epic battle with a lane creep. He took my aegis but I took his life!!!

Lol! Hey, that 1-5 was hard earned! After throwing my axes into an epic battle of everyone else, I... fell back to a strategic location and had an epic battle with a lane creep. He took my aegis but I took his life!!!

My favorite part of that was watching you at like level 15 trying to kill a creep. 5 hits later and its still at half health HAHAHA

i dunno if its just me, but the last few games, it seemed very much like whichever team picked up riki would win. i think the main reason is because warding, dust, and gems just aren't common items in anyone's build and is extremely situational (not so much warding, but its hardly ever something you see in hero guides).

i think its the combination of invisible and backstab that just makes riki a bit out of control and the only good way of stopping him is to stomp him way early in the game, or effective warding + gem use. its a bit gross that one character can change the other team's behavior so severely. with other carries, it doesn't seem like there needs to be such a concerted team strategy to counter, i haven't seen anyone pick up any one item yet to deal with just drow or lycan or even viper.

Riki definitely makes life more difficult. But in the game last night where Mortus chose BH, riki just wasn't a factor. I don't know if that had anything to do with BH, but it may have stunted him early.

He's definitely the bane of any character that isn't cautious. Stealth and backstab are dangerous enough, but when he puts the cloud on you, you're force to run out and turn your back. Blademail would be excellent, and just facing him.

I think maybe to a lesser extent anti-mage is another one or those characters. Especially if your team ends up being heavily mana dependent.

i dunno if its just me, but the last few games, it seemed very much like whichever team picked up riki would win. i think the main reason is because warding, dust, and gems just aren't common items in anyone's build and is extremely situational (not so much warding, but its hardly ever something you see in hero guides).

i think its the combination of invisible and backstab that just makes riki a bit out of control and the only good way of stopping him is to stomp him way early in the game, or effective warding + gem use. its a bit gross that one character can change the other team's behavior so severely. with other carries, it doesn't seem like there needs to be such a concerted team strategy to counter, i haven't seen anyone pick up any one item yet to deal with just drow or lycan or even viper.

Clinkz, BH, Broodmother, and weaver can all stealth in one way or another. I find those heroes to be very deadly if left unwarded or without a gem. You can also get the etheral blade which lets you invis. Granted Riki doesnt have to use abilities or items to stealth, but there are other heroes who can do similar things with much more deadly abilities. All BM has to do is hit her ult and chew riki apart as long as she turns around when he blinks, it should be a cakewalk. Smart play, map awareness, and grouping up are all good counters to a somewhat weak always invis hero.

Riki is not that bad, people just need to stop running away from him. It kills me, it's like the folks who run from Juggs when he spins.

If you are Tidewalker or Tiny or another reasonably durable person (assuming end game) just beat the bitch. Riki has to be behind you for BS damage and Jugg's spin is a flat damage amount which ends up being pretty low end game. I'm not saying everyone should just stand there and auto attach but if you are beefy you should at least have it as a possibility. Even if you don't have a disable...especially Juggs (this annoys me more because of a recent game), he can't even crit when he spins.

Thats what I do as viper. My priority is the lowest HP person, or the one who has the smallest health pool, or the one who can change a team fight (omniknight) usually in that order. If I get 3 kills, usually the rest of the team is still alive and we can get the other two who are left. Normally its the initiator or high hp player left as they are so much more durable

I'm fifty games deep at this point and have been in the beta for a while. I'd like to think I'm above average, but my stats prove otherwise - rather equal split between wins and losses (26/24). I just added myself to the spreadsheet.

My most used heroes have been Riki, Spirit Breaker, Tiny, Sandking and Dazzle I guess. I played quite a bit of DotA (1), but then took a long break.

Few heroes need to be handled with as much care in the early game as Ursa. He has to be matched up with someone who can harass him or you'll need heroes who can deal with him later. He can be an immense pain in the ass. A good start just gives that dude rocket fuel.

Edit:

So lately I've been playing Tiny a bit. I've never had much experience with him, but no matter how I do personally, I've somehow tended to end up on the winning team when I picked him. 5-1 at this point. Much better numbers than for heroes I like to think I'm actually good at playing. I just finished a pretty crazy game where I ended up 8.5k gold in surplus and with the kind of score I didn't think I'd be pulling off with this guy (usually satisfied with primarily doing setups, assists and saves). With enough damage and the cleave from Aghanim's, teamfights tend to end up in multikills. I also love throwing teammates in chase scenarios. I had a few really lovely tosses with Axe - he is the perfect guy to toss.

Played a crazy game yesterday. We had a shadow demon who we thought was going to go mid and a Vengeful Spirit who thought he was going bottom. Everyone buys and SD goes bottom pissing everyone off so VS goes mid. Proceeds to die 6 times to pudge (watched the replay, Pudge wasn't good, VS was just bad). Rages at the entire team about how bad everything is, buys a bunch of Tango's, burrows himself into the forest and proceeds to walk back and forth for 50 minutes while the game continues.

And a good thing he left. After that, me as Drow and a friend as Skeleton King proceed to carry the game 4v5 to a solid victory. SK built beast mode, would run into team fights by himself and I'd come in from the side and pick off everything. We had several 2v4's and 2v5's where neither of us would die and we'd grab several kills.

The funny thing is VS kept QQ'ing about everyone, including telling me I was playing Drow wrong when I was 4-0-2 and he was 0-6-0.

one of the other games I played wasnt as good. I randomed and got earthshaker wound up like 1/6/4 It wouldnt have been that bad except there was a brazilian screaming into his mic randomly every few minutes so I had to mute him. When you mute someone you also dont see their text, so i missed a few MIA calls and got a beatdown for it :/